DBT Skills
Building skills to navigate intense emotions, improve relationships, and cope with life's challenges in healthier ways.
Focus:
Emotional regulation, distress tolerance, mindfulness, and interpersonal effectiveness.
Registered Psychotherapist (CRPO 19399)
Anastasia Maltseva
Toronto • Online across Ontario
I help adults work through anxiety, self-doubt, trauma-related stress, and relationship patterns with more clarity and self-understanding. My approach is warm, collaborative, and active, combining deeper exploration with practical tools for emotional regulation, boundaries, and lasting change.
How I work
A steady space to understand patterns and practice change.
People come to therapy for many different reasons. Some are struggling with anxiety, overwhelming emotions, self-doubt, relationship difficulties, or major life transitions. Others find themselves repeating the same painful patterns despite their best efforts to change them. Some are carrying the impact of difficult experiences from the past, while others are trying to make sense of where they are in life and where they want to go next.
I see therapy as a collaborative process of understanding, change, and growth. I draw from several therapeutic approaches, including Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), psychodynamic thinking, attachment theory, and trauma-informed practice.
DBT is an especially important part of my work. I often help clients develop practical skills for managing emotions, navigating stress, setting boundaries, improving relationships, and responding more effectively during difficult moments. These skills can create a greater sense of stability, confidence, and choice in everyday life.
For clients who wish to explore their experiences more deeply, therapy can also focus on understanding the patterns that shape the way they relate to themselves and others. Through the lens of attachment, we may explore how earlier relationships, emotional experiences, and ways of adapting continue to influence life in the present.
Approach
An Integrative Approach
Different perspectives. One goal: to support meaningful changes.
CBT Structure
Understanding the connection between thoughts, emotions, behaviors, and body, and learning new ways to respond.
Focus:
Practical tools, problem-solving, skills, and building more helpful patterns.
Trauma-Informed Practice
Recognizing the impact of trauma and prioritizing safety, choice, and pacing in the therapeutic process.
Focus:
Safety, stabilisation, trust, empowerment, and nervous system awareness.
Humanistic Foundation
At the heart of the work is a belief in your inherent worth, capacity for growth, and ability to heal.
Focus:
Empathy, respect, genuineness, collaboration, and creating a safe space to be yourself.
Psychodynamic Understanding
Exploring how past experiences, relationships, and unconscious patterns shape the way you think, feel, and relate today.
Focus:
Insight, self-awareness, attachment, recurring patterns, and meaning.
Education
Education & Professional Training
Becoming a therapist is a lifelong process of learning. Alongside formal education, I continue to invest in advanced clinical training, supervision, and professional development to deepen my work with clients.
If it feels important for you to know more about my professional training, you can find a more detailed overview below.
Graduate Education
- Master of Arts (Honours) in Counselling Psychology, National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Moscow, Russia (2016–2018)
- Bridge to Registration and Employment in Mental Health (BREM) Program, recognized by the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO) (2024–2025)
Advanced Clinical Training
Psychodynamic & Psychoanalytic Approaches
- Psychoanalytic Diagnosis: Understanding Personality Structure in the Clinical Process — Nancy McWilliams, PhD (2026)
- Fundamental Psychoanalytic Perspective — Toronto Psychoanalytic Society (IPA) (2021–2022)
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) Certificate — Wilfrid Laurier University (2025)
- Level II: CBT for Anxiety Disorders and Depression — Wilfrid Laurier University (2025)
- Foundations of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy — Adler University (2024)
Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)
- Suicide: Reducing Stigma, Increasing Effectiveness — Portland DBT Institute (2024)
- Addressing Therapy Interfering Behavior in Clinical Practice — Portland DBT Institute (2024)
- Postvention from Suicide in Mental Health Practice: Balancing Process and Outcomes — Portland DBT Institute (2024)
- DBT for Parents of Multi-Diagnostic Young Adults: Finding Synthesis with SPACE — Portland DBT Institute (2024)
Trauma, Development & Mental Health
- Brain Story Certification — Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child & Alberta Family Wellness Initiative (2024)
- Psychological First Aid — Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2020)
ADHD
- Changing the ADHD Brain: Moving Beyond Medication (2026)
- ADHD in Children and Adolescents: Advances in Diagnosis, Treatment and Management — Russell Barkley, PhD (2026)
Humanistic & Gestalt Approaches
- Person-Centered Counsellor Training Based on the Work of Carl Rogers — Russian Person-Centered Approach Association (2016–2018)
- Theory and Practice of Gestalt Therapy — Moscow Gestalt Institute (2016–2019)
Next step
Ask your first questions before deciding.
A consultation is a simple way to share what is bringing you to therapy and get a sense of whether working together feels like a good fit.
Book a Consultation